Science & Health
It began with a lie. In 2001, the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) published a paper declaring that the antidepressant paroxetine (Paxil) was “generally well tolerated and effective” for adolescent depression. That conclusion was false. The manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), knew from its own data that the drug failed to outperform placebo and carried
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Madeline Halpert and Christal Hayes Nobel Prize-winning American scientist James Watson, one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA, has died aged 97. In one of the greatest breakthroughs of the 20th Century, he identified the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953 alongside British scientist Francis Crick, setting the stage for rapid advances in
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Why tech giants are offering premium AI tools to millions of Indians for free Nikita Yadav BBC News, Delhi Future Publishing via Getty Images Artificial intelligence companies are partnering with Indian firms to offer free or subsidised services Starting this week, millions of Indians will get one year of free access to ChatGPT’s new, low-cost
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Former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said he believes China intentionally engineered the SARS-CoV-2 virus to be asymptomatic as a bio-defensive aerosol vaccine vector in a new interview on The Dana Parish Podcast. Dr. Redfield shared his views on the dangers of gain-of-function research and how it can be used as a bioweapons program, or
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The human capacity to sculpt the terrain that surrounds us is enormous but not without limits. While a farmer or a gardener may replace or modify the geographical and botanical features on a given piece of land, it is only quite rarely, and with the help of an enormous expenditure of very scarce resources, that
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NYC Workers Fired for Refusing COVID Vaccine Could Get Their Jobs Back, Adams Says Gothamist reported: Mayor Eric Adams is offering 2,900 former city workers who lost their jobs after refusing to comply with COVID-19 vaccine mandates a path to return. The Department of Citywide Administrative Services published a notice Wednesday of a proposed rule
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Bayer Weighs Roundup Exit as Cancer Legal Bill Nears $18 Billion Bloomberg reported: The chemical that revolutionized farming over the last 50 years is in trouble. Glyphosate, once vaunted for its ability to kill plants and spare animals, is under assault on both fronts. In the UK, weeds are for the first time refusing to
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How a ‘swimming cap’ could transform care for brain-injured babies Janine Machin East of England technology correspondent, in Cambridge BBC Researchers say their “swimming cap”, which uses light and ultrasound to improve brain monitoring in newborns, is the first of its kind in the world Three-week-old Theo is fast asleep in a cot, unaware he
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James Watson: Controversial discoverer of ‘the secret of life’ Getty Images In February 1953, two men walked into a pub in Cambridge and announced they had found “the secret of life”. It was not an idle boast. One was James Watson, an American biologist from the Cavendish laboratory; the other was his British research partner
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When delegates gather in Geneva on November 17 for the 11th Conference of the Parties (COP11) to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), few will ask the obvious question: who pays for the room where it happens? The FCTC is the world’s only binding treaty on tobacco control. It now shapes
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